Am I Blue?

Just a few days ago, while enjoying the night air on the patio at our favorite local brewpub, an intense debate began about the nature of cheese: specifically, is there REALLY a difference between Gorgonzola and Blue Cheese, or are they really the same thing? Now, while this might not carry the same kind of philosophical weight as whether Superman could beat Flash Gordon at a footrace or what kind of animal Goofy was, I believe the issue still deserves some careful attention. Afterall, like many folks, I find straight blue cheese to be - well - icky, but I'll almost never object to a little Gorgonzola sprinkled on my salad. How is this possible?

From a variety of websites, I managed to deduce that all Gorgonzola is blue cheese, but like the old adage with the cat, not all blue cheese is Gorgonzola. Blue cheese refers to a myriad of different cultured dairy products that include little ribbons of blue or blue-green mold (yeah - and we eat it). Like many other kinds of cheese, Gorgolnzola gets its name from the geographic region from whence it oringinated - Gorgonzola, Italy. It is reported to be smoother and milder than many blue cheeses - in between the Stilton (England) and the Roquefort (French) in texture and flavor. (Stilton is a harder, dryer blue with a sharper flavor, Roquefort is creamer and milder and is made from sheep's milk instead of cow's). The cheese we traditionally call simply "blue cheese" is most probably of a Danish variety and is generally considederd (surprise) low quality and fatty (read inexpensive, the Walmart of the Blue Cheese World).


Now, how do you get little ribbons of mold (which most American houswives spend a lifetime combating) to fill your cheese and give off that oh-so-delightful cheese stink? Well, you start out by making your standard cheese curd to which you have added Penicillum cultures (happy little mold making bacteria), but not squeezing it quite completely together to create voids within the block (I guess those little guys need air, just like Michael Jordan). Then you poke more air holes in the cheese (the guide I read used a Phillips head screwdriver dipped in vodka to sterilize it). This allows the cultures to move through the mixture and leave their blue-green signature marbled throughout the cheese. Thank gawd for this tradition, which has ensured that Lysol and Clorox will never completely kill off ALL of the mold causing bacteria in the world. A major triumph for biodiversity.

So - the answer to the intial question of why I like Gorgonzola and dislike "blue cheese" is totally predictable. Gorgonzola is more expensive. Duh. What is not answered is why we like to eat moldy cheese in the first place. I have a theory, but I bet you guessed that. In a nut shell, my theory is that we like moldy cheese for the same reason we like fermented fruit and grains. At some point, we had to learn to like it or starve/go without alcohol. We evolved. Now we like nothing more than to drink fermented fruits and eat our spoiled milk with mold ribbons while we discuss the finer points of our highly sophisticated society. Damn, ain't progress great!

A chunk of Blue cheese with it's notorious accomplices

You want to know what kind of cheese you are? Knock yourself out. I'm cheddar. Don't know if that's good or not, but at least I like myself. I'd hate to be danish blue cheese - cheap and fatty...